Vodafone 'Black Friday' LG mess

Black Friday hasn't quite gone away, thanks to the administrative mess that has been left behind. Tesco have been having woe with their Click & Collect service and now, Vodafone have their knickers in a twist as well.

You may recall that you could get a LG G2 from Vodafone for £150, which people were very excited about. There were a load of orders and, it looks like Vodafone may have overreached and now there's a number of complaints about it all.

There's been delays on sending out the handsets and it appears, from the outside looking in, that Vodafone took orders far in excess of the stock they actually had. Customers have seen money taken from their accounts, but as yet, no mobile has been delivered.

Most customers have received numerous texts since the Black Friday sale, all saying "we'll update you in 10 days time", which isn't exactly instilling confidence into those who have parted with their cash.

One said: "I wanted to give them the chance to deliver within the original 1-2 week time frame. I have severe doubts that this will happen now as they have extended the response window beyond that. If it turns out I don't get the phone I won't be that bothered about the phone, I can just buy another somewhere else. What I will be complaining about is the circus that everyone has been put through."

It all looks like a bit of shambles.

Vodafone have also been telling puzzled customers by saying that they've been waiting for the manufacturers to hurry up and that "service request closed", which, from what we can glean, can ostensibly be ignored by anyone who has already ordered the LG G2. This message, sent out in a scattergun fashion, seems to be aimed at those who are trying to order the device from this point onward.

The worry there is that Vodafone have run out of these phones, which means further waiting for customers. We spoke to Vodafone, and their representative said that the company have "received the stock of new orders lately", which suggests strongly that they didn't have the stock for the amount of orders they took. Customers who have received confusing texts from Vodafone, and who don't mind waiting for their order, can basically ignore correspondence.

However, if you're in a rush because you bought this phone to use now, or as a Christmas present for someone, then things are trickier. The way to get this sorted is to speak to the online orders team, but we found that, when we rang, we were passed around from the online orders team, to the refund team, back to online orders, then back to the refund lot, then back to the online crew again. With a phone not delivered for 12 days, with little explanation, the whole thing is immensely frustrating.

Some have noted phonecalls that have lasted for 2 hours, so there's no quick fix to be found... yet.

We'll continue looking into this, and of course, if any of the readers stumble across a way around this, leave a comment or contact us on one of the social media channels and we'll share your wisdom.